What I did for beer today

[BrewMan13]

Couple days ago I kicked my doppelbock, and tasted wild ale 2. WA2 was an abject failure, so I dumped it, then cleaned 2 kegs and 1 tap line. Tapped my imperial stout on the newly empty line, and bottled a few right away for planned submission to NHC. Yesterday I filled a growler of said IRS to condition on bacon for a week for a small club competition. Still haven't brewed in the new house yet, but got the water checked.

 

[Dave Sarber]

Bottling day. So far, did 5 gallons of orange tripel, and almost done with 5 1/2 gallons of RIS. Still to go, 5 gallons of Scotch ale. Gotta go sterilize more bombers!

 

[JAReeves]

Couple days ago I kicked my doppelbock, and tasted wild ale 2. WA2 was an abject failure, so I dumped it, then cleaned 2 kegs and 1 tap line. Tapped my imperial stout on the newly empty line, and bottled a few right away for planned submission to NHC. Yesterday I filled a growler of said IRS to condition on bacon for a week for a small club competition. Still haven't brewed in the new house yet, but got the water checked.

Just wondering how long you waited before you declared your wild ale a failure? I have had some not work (wild yeasts from Burbank, CA), but I’ve also had great successes, (Torrance,CA). I have them at least a year, though before I dump them. Most of the time they don’t taste at all good until after the 6 month mark, sometimes after the year mark.

 

[Dave Sarber]

Busy morning. Did a final gravity check on the Scotch ale before bottling, went from 1.110 to 1.010, or a wee bit more than 13% ABV.. Might have to call it Royal Scot Ale!

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Ordered an inexpensive 5 gallon kettle for small brews because the enamel chipped on the canning pot I was using.

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

View attachment 659958

Busy morning. Did a final gravity check on the Scotch ale before bottling, went from 1.110 to 1.010, or a wee bit more than 13% ABV.. Might have to call it Royal Scot Ale!

Have one too many and you’ll be Scotchy MacScotch faced

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Bottle primed Stein Brew, wort was produced by many co-brewers! (Technically I helped)

View attachment 659995

It doesn’t taste like ashy rocks.

 

[BrewMan13]

Just wondering how long you waited before you declared your wild ale a failure? I have had some not work (wild yeasts from Burbank, CA), but I’ve also had great successes, (Torrance,CA). I have them at least a year, though before I dump them. Most of the time they don’t taste at all good until after the 6 month mark, sometimes after the year mark.

Almost 14 months. Was in the carboy for close to a year, then kegged for a couple months. I tested it a total of 3 times spaced far apart and it was only getting worse. I've had success in the past with the wild culture I used and have other batches in the pipeline, so not too broken up about it.

 

[Robert65]

Doing draught line cleaning now. Liking my new pump.

Still haven't spunded the beer I thought would go yesterday. Misled by gauging the batch progress with a refractometer and correction formula. Used hydrometer for the FFT. Got a surprise when I used it on the fermenting beer. Refractometer relegated to hot side.

 

[Immocles]

Fired up my Christmas present and brewed cream of 3 crops ale. Also used an immersion chiller for the first time and I can’t believe how quickly it worked omg.
Getting the new process and brew space figured out will take some time though.

 

[TheEagleRising]

Shipped my Secret Santa FOTD

 

[aharri1]

Usually late oct and late march.

Those are some fine looking hops. Add me to the list that didn't know hops could be grown this late. All the stuff I read was the summer solstice is the trigger for when hops should flower and start to ripen. The rule of thumb goal is to hit the top of the wire at the end of June, and then let the plants ripen.

Obviously there are exceptions. When do you let them shoot up out of the ground?

 

[Robert65]

Usually late oct and late march.

Same hills send up shoots twice in one year? Or do you have have separate plants on staggered life cycles? Sorry, this is blowing my 41°N mind.

 

[aharri1]

Same hills send up shoots twice in one year? Or do you have have separate plants on staggered life cycles? Sorry, this is blowing my 41°N mind.

Yes. I cut them back once harvested, and then they come back.

 

[Robert65]

Yes. I cut them back once harvested, and then they come back.

So cool!

 

[ba-brewer]

Brewed a 2gal batch of bitters using DME to use for validating slants. Did it while roasting coffee and got distracted looking at my recipe so I got an ordinary bitters instead of the best bitters strength I was hoping for. Was playing around with doing a late DME addition to use less hops and left out some DME.

This is more of a what I got in the mail, but got a box that was big enough to just hold 15lb of Barke pilsner malt in it. Got a second box the same size from white labs that only had 4 vials of yeast and an ice pack in it. Did inventory stuff.

 

[Dave Sarber]

Crushed the grains for a brew day tomorrow.
Edit, Saturday cancel, Sunday brew.

 

[seatazzz]

Sitting at work this morning doing my usual thing, and the husband (off work the last two days) sends a text asking if I use Citra hops much. I respond back, no, because they're expensive as poopy most of the time, and hard to get. We're both on the YVH email list but I don't check my personal email that much; he does, and as a result I got in on the flash sale they had today, and snagged two pounds of 2019 Citra pellets at $16/pound; SCORE!!! When I first checked this morning (probably about 30 minutes into the sale) they had 863 one pound packages; they were GONE in less than two hours. Was kinda fun to refresh the page and watch the count go down.

Now sitting here after a long day enjoying a glass of the porter I brewed three weeks ago; could do with a bit of aging, but tastes pretty darn good right now. And planning a brewday for Sunday; there's a Mosaic Smash IPA taking up the ferment fridge at the moment, but with the temperatures hovering in the high 40's to low 50's, I'm going to take a chance on doing a cold-fermented lager just out in the garage.

 

[Mutant]

Entered six beers to El Dorado County Fair yesterday. Getting ready to enter CA State Fair and AHA Regional/Nationals are coming up.

 

[JAReeves]

After working with my youngest, building a bookshelf for his room, a celebratory stout.

 

[BikerMatt]

-Trying to catch the brew-train once again (sipping on my last bottle of HB as I write this)
-Put about 100(of 400+) bottles to soak in chlorine solution
-Gathered all the rest in fermenters and other various boxes to wait for their turn
-Ordered the following items:
-12kg of Simpsons Maris Otter malt
-12kg of Simpsons Golden Promise malt
-100g of EKG pellets
-100g of Fuggles pellets
-100g of Challenger pellets
-1 SG meter to replace the old snapped one
Still need a fresh bottle of gas though and to clean the entire garage to be at least a little less of a fire hazard, first brew day in months coming at 11.1. if the stuff arrives in time.

 

[6Tap]

Entered six beers to El Dorado County Fair yesterday. Getting ready to enter CA State Fair and AHA Regional/Nationals are coming up.

Nice! Thanks for the reminder! [emoji482]

 

[Dave Sarber]

-Trying to catch the brew-train once again (sipping on my last bottle of HB as I write this)
-Put about 100(of 400+) bottles to soak in chlorine solution
-Gathered all the rest in fermenters and other various boxes to wait for their turn
-Ordered the following items:
-12kg of Simpsons Maris Otter malt
-12kg of Simpsons Golden Promise malt
-100g of EKG pellets
-100g of Fuggles pellets
-100g of Challenger pellets
-1 SG meter to replace the old snapped one
Still need a fresh bottle of gas though and to clean the entire garage to be at least a little less of a fire hazard, first brew day in months coming at 11.1. if the stuff arrives in time.

Don't forget yeast!

 

[Novacor]

Took apart and thoroughly cleaned a stuck beer faucet. Might have to do that more often, pretty gross inside.

 

[BikerMatt]

Don't forget yeast!

Those I got a bunch left from the last top-off, US-05, S-04 and Lallemand Nottinghams, checked before ordering, thx for reminding though as that coulda been an easy but a devastating oversight!

 

[Dave Sarber]

Made a plywood base for the new grain mill. Fits a 7 gallon bucket now, but more importantly, the plywood completely covers the mouth of the bucket, keeping the dust inside (hopefully!)

 

[aharri1]

Checked the gravity of my westvleteren clone and dropped from 1.107 to 1.026 in 3.5 days!! Thank you giant starter lol

 

[govner1]

Racked my porter onto 48 oz of raspberries and added blow off tubes to secondary fermentors.
Added whiskey from ASW to medium toast oak chips for addition in 5-7 days.
Cleaned transfer equipment and fermentors.

 

[BrewMan13]

Brewed a oud bruin style wild ale for the first brew at the new house. Was a bit nervous about using our water since it's high in Na, but we'll see how it goes.
Also using a heat lamp to control the temp in my fermentation fridge for the first time.

 

[seatazzz]

Milled the grain for tomorrow's brewday. New (to me) motorized mill can be persnickety, but it ran like a champ tonight. Perfect crush after two passes, first with the gap pretty wide and the second much tighter; I don't go by the numbers, just eyeball it, and it works fine. Plenty of intact hulls. Just need to get the mash tun set up and it's on in the morning.